Haestrom's Sun
by Brahma3
Summary: It always kind of bugged me how they never gave us a reason why Haestrom's sun was prematurely aging so I thought I'd write one. This is a oneshot, more will be written if there's interest. Also this is an AU story. This story has been rewritten to hopefully be less confusing.


Noriko Takaya and Kazumi Amano, both copilots of the impressive giant-sized robot "Gunbuster". Gunbuster, Earth's last best hope against the insect-like space monsters, was escorting the formally decommissioned Exelion on its way to stop an invading armada of the space monsters by detonating its degeneracy generator in the middle of the invading mass.

"Where's the Exelion?" Noriko asked worriedly after loosing sight of it while fighting off a swarm.

Kazumi took a moment to look around peering through the swarms around them, "There! Down below us," she said in relief. The ship, for the moment, had gone unnoticed by the enemy as it continued onwards.

Noriko let out a thankful sigh, "Come on Kazumi, lets do this for Coach!" Kazumi smiled to her partner, "For coach, and Earth!" They both shouted a battle cry as the Gunbuster Machine began flying down to the ship, and electrified foot leading the charge, "Lightning KIIICK!" the pilots shouted as the Buster machine plowed through thousands of grunts, cruisers, and carrier type space monsters stopping only on reaching the Exelion.

The Gunbuster then began firing its weapons at the swarms flying around them. twenty minutes of fighting later, the Exelion was finally in position. Noriko and Kazumi fall back and away from the Exelion with small feelings of regrets of the soon demise of the ship but thankful that its final moments would save humanity. With a final goodbye they flew off for home.

* * *

The Exelions' degeneracy generator began to build up to an overload all the while as its hulls where breached by a boarding ship that dispensed hundreds of the "small" grunts. As the insect soldiers stormed the corridors of the ship, its degeneracy generator finally reached critical and unleashed the awesome power of a black hole that ripped apart the space monster armada molecule by molecule pulling them to its center.

At the epicenter (if one were able to witness and survive the occurrence), Exelion jutted up from a tear in space, caused by its warp generator unknowingly tripped, as if refusing its demise before sinking into it and leaving the universe forever.

* * *

A tear erupts in an alternate universe which revolves around mass effect technology. The Exelion fell out through the portal before its warp generator gave out causing the warp portal to collapse cutting it off from its home universe. Unfortunately, the organic boarding ship was still impaled in Exelion with its payload of giant insects still roaming the halls of the ship stopped in mid-destruction.

There is no analogue to translate the hive-mind of the space monsters but if one were able to, the closes one would be able to come would be this =We can not feel our brethren. We must increase our number. "It" can wait=. And the giant beetles returned to their larger brother which pulls away from the Exelion and toward a suitable breeding ground. The closes being the sun to the planet Haestrom.

When the boarding ship pulled out the Exelion, the action tripped a program in the bridge instructing the ship to return home. Half blind and nearly crippled, the Exelion used its sensors to determine its position against the stars. The computers paused momentarily as the stars were out of alignment but it's programming included the time-dilations of its FTL travel and adjusted for the Rip Van Winkle effect and the blue ship headed for home for home, Earth.

The alien "ship" wasted no time releasing hundreds of eggs into Haestrom's sun. The eggs, now firmly planted began consuming the sun from the inside out. This continued over the course of fifty years, each new generation laying a fresh batch forcing the sun to become older faster than it was ever meant to. Fifty years had caused the sun to grow too old to support a comfortable life on Haestrom causing the Quarians to worry and send Tali's team to find out why.

The results were inconclusive.

With the threat of Reaper invasion ever closer, Tali joined Shepard's team to stop the Collectors. And in the process were fortunate (or unfortunate) in destroying a mass relay delaying the Reapers approach. Many Batarian colonist paid the heavy price to afford the galaxy an extra six months.

* * *

Finally, the Reapers came and began their crusade across the stars. Through sheer luck, Liara was able to find plans for the crucible weapon before Earth space was overrun. With these in hand admiral Hackett began building the weapon. As it neared completion, Hackett was interrupted by an ensign while he was looking over progress reports.

"What is it?" Hackett asked as he looked up from his omni-tool.

"Sir! the frigate SSV Vimy Ridge that was scouting the asteroid field detected a ship," the ensign said with understandable concern.

Hackett nodded, the asteroid field provided necessary raw material to relieve the stress of working on the weapon in deep space. However it also had the unfortunate effect of shielding any ships from sensors allowing an uninvited guest to sneak up on them. "Is it one of ours?"

The ensign shift on his feet, "No sir. They said that the ship was huge."

Hackett turned directly to the ensign, "Reapers?" He hoped not. Not when they were so close to finishing.

The ensign shifted again, "... No sir. the Vimy Ridge reported there being English writing on the outer hull. They want to know how they should proceed."

Hackett's interests was piqued, "Have you reported this to anyone else?"

"No, sir."

"Keep it that way till I get back, I want to have a look at this thing. Maybe we can use it."

The ensign nodded as the admiral walked to the hanger of his dreadnought and boarded a Kodiak shuttle and had the pilot take him to the frigates current position. As they flew around the asteroid field, Hackett was able to instantly see the unknown vessel. It was massive, at what looked to be at least seven kilometers long it was more than able to dwarf any dreadnought he'd seen if they stood next to each other.

"Ho-ly crap," the pilot said in amazement.

Hackett was too entranced by the vessel out before him to discipline the pilot on proper protocol and only grunted in agreement. A few short minutes later they entered the hanger bay of the Vimy Ridge which was modeled after the Normandy SR-2, one of two barely completed before the attack on Earth. After the hanger repressurized, Hackett hopped out of the shuttle and was greeted by captain Fieldings.

"Welcome aboard admiral," he said with a crisp salute.

Hackett returned it, "So, what were you able to find out?"

"Not much sir. It just popped out of FTL twenty minutes ago. We tried projecting the course it came in on but it's all in deep space or behind dark relays." he said handing Hackett a pad.

Hackett looked over the preliminary report, mostly exterior views of the ship, "She's seen a lot of action to hasn't she?" he said noting several holes in the hull, some were big enough that the Vimy Ridge could fly through if it wanted to.

"Yes sir, I just hope we don't meet what made them."

Hackett let out a short chuckle as he nodded, "I'll say. We have enough trouble with Reapers as it is."

"There is one more thing sir," Fieldings said causing Hackett to look up, "The ship isn't producing any mass effect fields sir."

This surprised the admiral. All space faring vessels need mass effect technology. Even ships as small as frigate needed the technology. Hell, dreadnought-sized ships needed it just to maintain integrity.

"Could they have shut their systems off as they came in?" Hackett asked.

"I doubt it sir, not with a ship that size. Although we'll find out more in a few hours, I sent over a team to investigate."

Hackett mulled over what the captain said before handing the pad back to Fieldings, "Thank you captain, continue your investigation. I want your ship to personally oversee the investigation by yourselves until you hear otherwise from me is that clear?"

"Yes sir!"

"Good, consider everything you find on that ship to be classified. No one outside your crew is to approach without my permission understood?"

"Crystal sir!"

"Very well, carry on captain." Hackett said finishing the discussion with a salute.

Fieldings returned the salute as Hackett got back in the Kodiak.

After the captain left, the shuttle began its return to its parent ship. Hackett looked out the window at the large blue coloured ship and marveled at the red striping that ran along the sides. If it were possible, he'd liked to have his people look over the ship to uncover its technologies. If this crazy plan of relying on a million year old weapon went south, then maybe they'll get some luck in this one.

"Exelion," Hackett said reading the name splayed across the rearmost section of the ship.

* * *

Author's note: after going over the first version I realised that a lot of people who aren't familiar with the Gunbuster anime may get a little lost as to how this story would explain how Haestrom's sun would prematurely age. so I rewrote the ending and added a bit more to show the mass effect universes impressions on it.

so with that said, I hope those who read it already like the changes/additions I made, ciao.


End file.
